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Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper proposes $20.3 billion budget for 2013-14

Hickenlooper budget proposes more money for education, state workers

By Tim HooverThe Denver Post

Posted:
11/01/2012 12:31:52 PM MDT

Updated:
11/02/2012 02:19:48 AM MDT

In the most robust spending plan presented since before the Great Recession began, Gov. John Hickenlooper on Thursday proposed a 2013-14 state budget that would give state employees raises, add more money to schools and colleges and still give seniors a property tax break.

Under the $20.3 billion budget recommended by Hickenlooper, a Democrat elected in 2010, total spending would increase by 5.4 percent over the current, 2012-13 fiscal year, which ends in June. The biggest increases would come in spending for health care, which would see an 8.6 percent increase, or $475.6 million. Forty percent of that spending increase, however, is in federal funds.

That's partly because of Medicaid, the state and federally funded program, which would add some 51,000 new clients to its rolls, taking the total number of enrollees to more than 700,000 — yet another record high.

Other areas of the budget — such as K-12 education and colleges and universities — also would see some new money after years of cuts, level funding or relatively small increases.

Despite the increases, the spending plan Hickenlooper proposes, which now goes to the legislature's powerful Joint Budget Committee
is still $1.1 billion, or 14.4 percent, less than the 2007-08 budget.

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"It is heartening to be at the other side of what has been a very steep decline and see ourselves clearly recovering," Hickenlooper said. "We urge people to recognize that Rome wasn't built in a day, and after all those attacks, Rome wasn't rebuilt in a day."

Officials cautioned there could be trouble on the horizon. Potential economic crises in Europe and the prospect of automatic, deep cuts in federal spending if Congress can't come to an agreement on debt reduction could throw the national economy, and Colorado's, into another tailspin.

Republicans had mixed reactions to Hickenlooper's proposed budget.

State Sen. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, and a member of the Joint Budget Committee, said Senate Republicans had a "lot of points of agreement" with the governor on the budget. And he didn't offer any criticism of the governor's proposed increases.

By contrast, House Speaker Frank McNulty, R-Highlands Ranch
, said, "We certainly hope that the spending in Gov. Hickenlooper's proposed budget is not a return to the tax-and-spend agenda that moved us closer to bankrupting our state during the (Gov. Bill) Ritter recession."

Highlights from the recommended budget include:

• Increasing total spending for K-12 education by $213 million, or a 4.8 percent increase. It would represent a $185 per pupil increase over the current year.

• Hiking total spending for higher education by $68.3 million, or 2.3 percent. The governor's proposal, however, still allows colleges to increase tuition by 9 percent.

• Giving state employees, who have gone four years without a raise, a 1.5 percent pay increase, at a cost of $57.8 million. The governor, though, proposes that state employees split the cost of increases in health, life and dental and insurance costs.

• Spending $2 million more on tourism, including a $500,000 campaign to give Colorado a "unified branding platform."

• Spending $17 million, 90 percent of which is federal funds, on replacing an antiquated computer system that helps administer the state's Medicaid system. This is a different computer system than the notorious, trouble-plagued CBMS system the state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on.

The governor in the 2012 legislative session proposed suspending the Senior Homestead Exemption, a property tax break for those 65 and older which costs the state about $100 million a year. Later forecasts showed revenues had improved enough to fund the program without cutting others.

Budget director Henry Sobanet
said that while the governor's preference in the long term is to reform the tax break, which has no means test, "in light of the returning revenue and in light of the harsh lines in the sand" over the issue, Hickenlooper isn't proposing a major change to the exemption in this budget year.

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